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New York Releases 'Road Map for the Digital City'

New York City will develop an open government framework featuring APIs for city data, relaunch its website and make a host of changes to the way it presents government information online, according to a report prepared by the city and announced today.

The city's newly minted chief digital officer, Rachel Sterne, prepared the report as her first task upon arriving in city hall. They're streaming a related announcement now, live, from New York City Hall. Open government efforts are just one part of a broader set of recommendations that discuss consolidating and standardizing the city's social media presences and strengthening the city's connection with the New York technology industry.

There are no explicit plans in the report for increasing the number of available datasets — such as more detailed city budget data — but do include an "apps wishlist" to streamline the process of requesting more data.

Implementing the recommendations in the report will in large part be the responsibility of city Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications Commissioner Carole Post, who is already in the process of pushing internally for updated city IT. Post is quoted in the report as saying that open data and open government recommendations must be handled carefully:

In the end, there will always be certain types of data—privacy or security-related data especially—that the City, as steward, must safeguard. But given that, what the Bloomberg Administration has consistently done is work toward a new data paradigm. In the past the practice for most institutions, government or other- wise, has been to keep information closed save for those few exceptions that were made public. We have worked to turn that idea on its head, believing that data should be open by default unless there is a compel- ling reason to keep it closed. And we’ll continue this important work for the benefit of all New Yorkers in an increasingly open age.